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Purple Rabbit:
Deleting the account after 180 day of silence strikes me as a bit harsh. I was active last Spring as apps that interested me were being developed. I became less active as the apps were perfected. The current development effort is great, but I'm not ready to try them yet. I may choose to do so later (if I'm allowed). I log in almost every day to see what has happened.

Is someone who posted more than 180 days ago now dirt? Are the membership levels such that they need to be limited? I understand the spam problem, but I'm a bit confused how this rule solves that problem. I might suggest that the earlier idea of log ins may be more appropriate.

I assume my 180 day clock starts now (OK, you said Sept 1, but I'm taking poetic license here!) so please answer in the next 6 months before I become a pumpkin ;D

Rick

Jason G:
Hi Rick,
  While I didn't come up with the changed rules myself, I can certainly comment on some of the motivations & how the new strategies are already proving effective.

One of the big problems has been that Bots have become so sophisticated, they can create & activate new accounts even with captcha and email verification in place.  These tend not to post at all on the forums, or be picked out fairly quickly if they do.  That blows out the registered users list making it unmanageable, and sometimes legit users will get caught in the crossfire despite best efforts. Minimising that potential has great benefits to forming a solid community.

In addition, gradually, after successive developments, there have been surges in legitimate interest from users.  This primarily, though, is a coding & development forum.  In some cases it became evident that some users were demanding elevated access just so they could 'get stuff not available to the public yet' without providing feedback or understanding testing protocol.  Indeed there were even security violations of the web server from time to time.

There are also issues relating to server space, considering our gracious hosts rescued the site from potential oblivion, we are extremely grateful & don't want to push our good fortune  for the sake of free for all unrestrained growth.

In those contexts, moving to a participation based model has shown to give us what I believe to be the best group of Beta & Alpha testers so far, and that the stable environment & focused crew I hope might draw back some of the development talent that moved on before my time here (for various reasons), and draw new talent in also, which is happening as we speak.

I hope you'll find the time & interest to 'have a crack' at the builds under development when you can, and consider what the usefulness of that participation model can be to you.  For example, new opportunities continue to develop for myself, just by gaining experience hanging around with intellectuals around here  ;)

Cheers, Jason

Purple Rabbit:
Thanks Jason. I think I understand the problem better now. I'm still a bit at odds with the solution however  :'(

Obviously this isn't what I wanted to hear, but c'est la vie...sigh. I think I heard you say that you want the hard core testers and coders here. That's not me. I'm just your normal run-of-the-mill retired engineer who likes to play with stuff. I've been happy to provide comments where I could on apps that I used. I don't speak unless I have something to say.

Hopefully the powers-that-be (whoever they might be) might look at this issue again.

Pumpkin

Jason G:

--- Quote from: Purple Rabbit on 08 Aug 2010, 06:37:20 pm ---I'm just your normal run-of-the-mill retired engineer who likes to play with stuff. I've been happy to provide comments where I could on apps that I used.
--- End quote ---

That's fits my definition of a Beta Tester.  We need those (otherwise I don't think I'd be here).  Absolutely we need coders & the 'hard core' technical type testers, But I think you might be ascribing some kindof elitism where the intent is to build a community not infested with spam & knobs. 

Can I ask how being, as you call it, 'run of the mill' and a retired engineer that will provide comments when needed doesn't perfectly fit the profile to test, e.g. unified installers & utilities ? To my mind it fits that perfectly, along with application development.

It isn't always easy to get testers either hard core, as you describe, or my looser definitions to comment on an 'open forum' to contribute actively (even in small ways)  and it's that 'art' you seem to be taking issue with.  In the long run I know your comments, occasional & brief though they may be, can be far more valuable than some spam bots.  Give us a tiny amount of feedback or encouragement and that'll go a lot further than dragging up old threads to build a post count.  After all, some of us are scientists & engineers too, so do like to get a sense we're building & contributing to something bigger than ourselves, rather than creating a big mess on somebody's server  :D.

Cheers, Jason

arkayn:
I am not a coder, but I do have hardware that can test some of the current apps that are in beta and alpha. Being cross-platform also helps.

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